nothing in particular

We had some fantastic chinese la mian on Monday at Amara Hotel Food Court and decided to try making some chinese dishes today. So dinner is gonna consist of La Mian, gyoza and dashi maki tamago(this is a overdue dish that we wanted to try weeks/months ago)

YY will be doing the gyoza wrappers + fillings and wrapping it whereas K will be attempting the La Mian.

References:
1. Recipe for Gyoza.
I used this blog for reference on wrapping method.
Another useful blog for video reference on wrapping.
2. Youtube vide on: Dashi Maki Tamago
3. Video on how to pull La Mian


With some basic knowledge from the above references, I set out at around 5pm to start making the gyoza wrapper from scratch.


Mix in boiling water to plain flour + salt(above), then add in tap water. Knead into smooth dough.



Ok, now leave the dough to rest for 30mins.




Meanwhile, K taught me to chop chives and cabbage properly. K then minced the pork using two choppers (do not get minced pork, mince it yourself for better texture fillings).

A simple illustration on cutting chives/veggies like cabbage.
1. Place the cleaver/knife at an angle to the chopping board surface.
2. Use your body weight, *don't be too far from the chopping board* hold the handle steadily(where your hand is), push down.
3. Cut all the way horizontally across.

You know you are doing this right when the chives says "ceerk!" when you cut them in step 2. Well, obviously I was lousy at cutting such veggies..cos they were not severed. And I had to drag my knife along the chopping board..after using this method, they were nicely cut each time.


The dough has finally rested for 30mins, divide into portions of 10g each i.e. each wrapper is 10g of dough.



Me rolling the dough into thin wrapper.



Above is mine, below is K's. I think we need to do it a few more times to have a perfect tin, round wrapper. After this, I decided to start wrapping my dumplings but..WTF!! They stuck onto each other and refused to peel off one another. So I had to redo 6 of them :@
Remember to put more flour in between the layers of wrappers.



Wrapping the gyoza...here's the half done one, just before sealing the top . Its wrapped in har gow style.

Not very even though >_<''

Some mega sized dumplings from K -_-..put oil into the pan, fry till bottom is golden brown.



Add in water, cook till dry before adding abit of oil to continue cooking for while.



The end product..didn't fry the top of the dumplings. The recipe for the skin was pretty good, nice and chewy. However, it was so hard to control the temperature of the gas stove and some of the dumplings got chao ta at the bottom zzzzz~



One of them which was saved from getting burnt :)



For dashi stock, we used this powdered form of stock whereby 1 sachet makes 120grams of stock (add water to it). And well, its actually alot cheaper than buying konbu and bonito flakes to make it as this whole package of 8 sachets costs only $5+.



To start making Dashi Maki Tamago, oil the pan first.



Mix 3 eggs together with 30g of dashi stock, 1tbsp of Mirin, sugar and soy sauce.
Pour 1/4 of the mixture into the pan.


At the last layer. From doing this egg, we realised it's really hard to grasp the right temperature at the gas stove, but the main thing is that the pan must be hot enough such that when a drop of egg mixture goes in, it starts to get cooked.

Rolling the egg was quite hard using chopsticks too, it seems doing it with a spatula was easier. Another thing about rolling eggs is that, do it before it gets too cooked else your layer may break easily.



The end product is overly browned but there's still some liquid inside and heavy 蛋腥味.
We need to research more on this man.
EWWWWWWW ~_~



How did Marutama do it so well??

Ok, that's all for dinner.



Wait a minute, wasn't there supposed to be the La Mian by K?
Yah there was a dough, but it was firstly, too hard. Then alot more water was added in and it became too soft for pulling => no LA mian.
So we cut the dough up into noodle like form, cooked it ..hmm~ very chewy stuff (@.@)

No pictures.
All of you out there better start appreciating the bowl of hand pulled noodles, dashi maki tamago and well done gyoza out there >_>'''